Creating new workspaces with ConneX

ConneX allows authorised users to create and manage Atlas or Microsoft Teams workspaces, with options to automatically connect them to the rest of Atlas via the Global Navigation and Add It.

To authorise users to create workspaces from ConneX you need to ensure they are added to the relevant security groups in Microsoft 365, e.g. "Atlas Connect Knowledge Workspace Creators" for those who should be authorised only to create Knowledge workspaces. An overview of ConneX Permssion Groups can be found here.

Accessing ConneX

ConneX is accessible from Knowledge workspaces by clicking All Workspaces in the left hand menu:

This will take you to a page containing the ConneX web part. If you do not see this option in the left-hand menu, or your workspace is a Communications workspace without the left-hand menu, you can go to Site Contents then open the Site Pages library and find the page "all-workspaces.aspx". Each Atlas workspace has this page available so you can go to the URL directly by the URL suffix: /SitePages/all-workspaces.aspx

If it is not readily available we'd recommend saving the link somewhere for later use, for example your browser favourites or My Links in Atlas. If you have permissions to add Launchpad links you could consider adding it to the Launchpad for easy access.

Creating new workspaces

This information has been updated for Atlas versions 3.0+. In Atlas 2.X these screens will look different but the overall process is unchanged.

To get started, click the New Workspace button, by default found in the top right of ConneX:

This will open a panel on top of the page which will guide you through the process.

First, choose a template based on the type of workspace you need. The options available may depend on your Atlas package or agreements:
- To create a Knowledge Workspace, choose Knowledge
- To create a Communication Workspace, choose Communication
- To create a Collaboration Workspace, choose Collaboration
- To create a Legal Workspace, choose Legal.
Once you choose the type of workspace ConneX will load the available templates. For example if we choose Knowledge we will see the following two templates:

You can click the Details button on each template to see the included Page Layouts and Metadata fields. All Workspace types and their available templates are described in the following article: What different types of Workspace are available in ConneX?
Next you need to fill in the basic workspace details - first enter the Workspace title for your workspace, if required modify the suggested URL (under Workspace name), then add a Description. The description is only shown in the ConneX dashboard:

Note that multiple workspaces can have the same TITLE but not the same URL.
Next you'll configure the Managed Metadata configuration for the workspace. First you need to choose whether to apply "additional controls" to managed metadata fields:
- If you choose Yes, all metadata fields will be limited to single values chosen below in order to restrict the metadata that will be visible and usable in this workspace.
- If you choose No, metadata restrictions will not be applied and any tags can be applied to the content in this workspace.
Next, you can set the default metadata tags for your workspace. First you'll choose the defaults for the Atlas Global Metadata under "General" - you can start typing into the boxes to get suggested tags, or click the "tags" on the right to see the full heirarchy:

Please note that if you specify default tags for a field you should remove the default *All* tag (e.g. *Departments*) to ensure only relevant content is pulled into your workspace.
Then you can set the default metadata for specific types of content, such as the News Type for any News pages created in this workspace, Information Type for Knowledge pages and Documents, etc.:

If you leave the above section with only the default tags then content may be very difficult for users to find. Therefore we recommend setting at least one tag for any given workspace (except the "Home" workspace which is expected to pull in all content), as long as those tags are relevant.

For example, a Knowledge Workspace for a particular Department should always be tagged with the relevant Department at this stage so that all content created in that workspace will benefit from the default value.
The next step is to configure the security settings. First, choose whether your workspace should be Public or Private. If you want all users to be able to find and join the workspace create a Public workspace. If you want to control exactly who has access, particularly if this workspace will contain sensitive data, choose a Private workspace.
Add the initial Owners, Members and Visitors who should get access to the site as soon as it is created - you can always modify or add to these later by editing the workspace again via ConneX.

You can use Active Directory groups for this rather than adding individual users since it could save time, however if you are using a Microsoft 365 Group or Microsoft Teams-based workspace template the Owners and Members will be split into the individual users and updates to the AD group will not be automatically reflected in the Team. This is because contrary to the behaviour in SharePoint, Microsoft Teams does not support using AD groups. Visitors are on the SharePoint side only as Teams does not support read-only permissions, so you can always use AD groups for Visitors.

To find groups or users to add, start typing the Group Name or name of the user into the Owners or Members field, then pick the group or user from the suggestions:
Next ,you need to set up the Workspace connections. Choose if Owners and Members can use Add It to create content within this workspace - if you don't want users to use Add It with this workspace you can simply select 'No'.
Finally, choose if your workspace should be shown in the Global Navigation, and if so what the label should be and where it should appear in the structure. If you choose No you do not need to give any more details, if you choose Yes fill in the Name in the menu and choose where it should appear by selecting the parent term:
Once you have completed the configuration described above, click View summary to see all your configuration options before provisioning your workspace:
You will see a screen like this:

Review this information carefully and ensure that default tags are set as expected, security settings are correct, etc.
If you need to change something, click Cancel at the bottom of the summary and go back in te process to make the change. If everything is correct, click Create workspace to start the provisioning process.
During the provisioning process you will be able to see the status from the ConneX web parts:
When provisioning is complete you and all others you added as Owners will receive an email confirmation.